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OF NEW YORK. 



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A ^ 






' &L\A^ OUC^e ,«-j^/ ' y f— ^ 

( Th^uz, cux^. a— cLo^Lc^l, (V^asV^cJ aas-v-i^C&L 



/7 



The Shakespeare Society of New York, 

INCORPORATED APRIL 20, 1885. 




Co promote tl;e fenotolrtgc aniJ ctutip of tl)t SStorfta 

of 5Mm» llbjmftespeare, anto tlje i^fjafcesperean 

antt ©Iteabet&an 5Drama, 



IN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 

JUNE 15. 1885. 



Resolved, That in order that the papers printed un- 
der authority of this Society may be of the highest 
character, and of value from all standpoints, the Socie- 
ty does not stand pledged as responsible for the opin- 
ions expressed or conclusions arrived at in the said 
papers, but considers itself only responsible in so far as 
it certifies by its Imprimatur that it considers them as 
original contributions to Shakespearean study, and as 
showing upon their face care, labor and research. 



/ 



Piper* of Jft. g. ftljatuepearc ftorirtp, J9o. 6. 

i 



Tie Once Used f oris in Shakespeare, 



BY 

JAMES DAVIE BUTLER. 



Read before the Society April 22, 1886 



Press of the New York Shakespeare Society. 



"Ft 5 oil 

•E>9 



THE "AiragXeyopieva IN SHAKESPEARE. 
Omnia rara pr cedar a; ipsa raritate rariora. 



When we examine the vocabulary of Shake- 
speare what first strikes us is its copiousness. 
His characters are countless, and each one 
speaks his own dialect. His little fishes never 
talk like whales, nor do his whales talk like 
little fishes. The language assigned to each 
character is made suitable to it, and to no 
other, and this with a truth and naturalness 
which the readers and spectators of every fol- 
lowing age have recognized. Those curious 
in such matters have espied in his works quo- 
tations from seven foreign tongues, and those 
from Latin alone amount to one hundred and 
thirty-two. 

Our first impression that the Shakespearian 
variety of words is multitudinous is confirmed 
by statistics. The titles in Mrs. Cowden 
Clarke's Shakespearian Concordance, counted 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 



one by one, have been ascertained to be more 
than twenty-four thousand. The total vocabul- 
ary of Milton's poetical remains is more 
nearly seventeen than eighteen thousand 
( I 7,377) ; and that of Homer, including the 
hymns as well as both Iliad and Odyssey, is 
scarcely nine thousand. Five thousand eight 
hundred and sixty words exhaust the vocabul- 
ary of Dante's Divina Comedia. In the En- 
glish Bible the different words are reckoned 
by Mr. G. P. Marsh, in his lectures on the 
English language, at rather fewer than six 
thousand. Renan's estimate is 5,642. The 
number of titles, however, in Cruden's Con- 
cordance has been found to be greater by 
more than a thousand, namely, 7,209. Those 
in Robinson's Lexicon of the Greek Testa- 
ment I have learned by actual count to be 
about five thousand five hundred. 

Some German writers on Greek grammar 
believe they could have taught Plato and De- 
mosthenes useful lessons concerning Greek 
moods and tenses, even as the ancient Athen- 
ians, according to the fable of Phaedrus, 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 3 

undertook to prove that a pig did not know 
how to squeal so well as they did. However 
this may be, any one of us to-day, thanks to 
the Concordance of Mrs. Clarke and the lexi- 
con of Alexander Schmidt, may know much 
concerning Shakespeare's use of language 
which Shakespeare himself could not have 
known. One particular as to which he must 
have been instinctively ignorant, while we 
may have knowledge, is regarding his employ- 
ment of once used words. 

The phrase "AuaB, Xeyo^eva, literally 
"once spoken," may be traced back to the Alex- 
andrine glossographers, centuries before our 
era, who invented it to describe those words 
which they observed to occur once, and only 
once, in any author of literature. It is so con- 
venient an expression for statistical commen- 
tators on the Bible, and on the classics as well, 
that they will not willingly let it die. The 
synonymous phrase ^AnaS, eip?j/xiva is also a 
favorite with some Germans, but if we accent 
it according to its Greek accents, it is hard to 
pronounce, and I accordingly eschew it. 



4 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

The list of words used once, and only once, 
in Shakespeare, is surprisingly large. Those 
words are more than any man can easily num- 
ber. Nevertheless I have counted those be- 
ginning with two letters. The result is that 
the once used words with initial A are 364, 
and those with initial M are 310. 

I have no reason to suppose the census with 
these initials to be proportionally greater 
than that with other letters. If it is not, then 
the Shakespearian words occuring only once 
cannot be fewer than 5,000, and they are 
probably a still greater legion. 

The number I have culled from 146 pages 
of Schmidt is 674. At this rate the total on 
the 1,409 pages of the entire lexicon would 
foot up 6,504. It is possible then that Shake- 
speare discarded, after once trying them, 
more different words than fill and enrich the 
whole English Bible. The old grammarians 
said their term supine was so named because 
it was very seldom employed, and therefore 
was almost always lying on its back. The 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 5 

supines of Shakespeare outnumbered the em- 
ployees of most authors. 

No notices of Shakespearian * AnaB, 
Xeyojusva had come to my knowledge when 
my attention was first called to that theme. In 
the midst of my investigation, however, I ob- 
served a statement in the London Academy 
(No. 402, p. 48) that some English scholar 
had counted no less than 549 words in the 
single play of Henry V. that are nowhere else 
discoverable in the Shakespearian dramas. It 
may also be worth noting that the first line 
which Shakespeare ever wrote, or at least 
published, namely : 

" Even as the sun with purple-colored face." 

contains a compound w r hich he thenceforth 
and forever refrained from repeating. 

The multitude of Shakespearian once used 
words appears still more surprising if we com- 
pare it with expressions of the same class in 
the Scriptures and in Homer. 

In the English Bible the once used words 
with the initial A 69 and M 63 are in all one 



6 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

hundred and thirty-two, to 674 under the 
same initials in Shakespeare. These Biblical 
terms would be more than twice as many as 
we find them if as numerous in proportion to 
their total vocabulary as his are. 

The Homeric once used words with initial 
M are 78. But if as numerous in proportion 
to Homer's whole world of words as Shake- 
speare's are, they would run up to 186 ; that 
is, to more than twice as many as their actual 
number. 

In the Greek New Testament I have 
counted sixty-three once used words commenc- 
ing with the letter M, a number as large as 
that in the whole English Bible commencing 
with the same letter, which is also exactly 
sixty-three. The fact indicates in St. Paul, 
and others who wrote the Greek Testament, 
a wider range of expression than their En- 
glish translators could boast. 

The Shakespearian once used words with ini- 
tial M. — which amount to over three hundred 
(310), I have also compared with the whole 
verbal inventory of the English language so 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 7 

far as it begins with that letter. To my sur- 
prise they make up almost one-fifth of that 
stock, which, on the authority of the Nation 
(vol. XX, p. 345.) can muster only 1,641 
words, with initial M. 

You will at once inquire : What is the 
nature of these rejected Shakesperian vo- 
cables, which he seems to have viewed either 
as milk that would bear no more than one 
skimming, or rather as " beauty too rich for 
use, for earth too dear ? " The percentage cf 
classical words among them is great — greater 
indeed than in the body of Shakespeare's 
writings. According to the analysis of Weisse, 
in an average hundred of Shakespearian 
words one-third are classical and two-thirds 
Saxon. But then, he adds, all the classical 
elements have inherent meaning, while half of 
the Saxon have none. The result is that of 
the significant words in Shakespeare one-half 
are of classical derivation. 

Now of the once used words with initial A, I 
call 262 words out of 364 classical, and 152 out 
of the 310 with the initial M. That is: 414 out 



8 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

of 674, or about four-sevenths of the whole 
host commencing with those two letters. 

In doubtful cases I have classed those 
words only as classical, the first etymology of 
which in Webster is from a classical or Rom- 
ance root. In the Biblical once used words the 
classical factor is enormous, namely not less 
than 69 per cent., while even in Shakespearian 
words of the same class it is no more than 
sixty-one. 

Again, among the 674 A. and M. once used 
words, the proportion of words now obsolete 
is unexpectedly small. Of 310 with initial M 
only one-sixth, or fifty-one at the utmost are 
now disused either in sense, or even in form. 
Of this half-hundred a few were used in Shake- 
speare, but are not at present, as verbs: as to 
maculate, to miracle, to mud, to mist, to mis- 
chief, to moral. Also, merchandized and 
musicked. 

Another class, now rarely written, are mis- 
proud, misdread, mappery, mansionary, mary- 
buds, masterdom, mistership, mistressship. 

Then there are slight variants from our or- 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 9 

thography or meanings, as mained for maimed, 
markman for marksman, make for mate, 
makeless for mateless: mirable, mervailous, 
mess for mass, — manakin, minikin, meyny for 
many, momentany for momentary: misgraffing, 
mountainer, moraler, misanthropos: mott for 
motto; to mutine: minutely, every minute. 

None seem wholly dead words except the 
following eighteen. To mammock tear, mell 
meddle, mose mourn, micher truant, mome 
fool, mallecho mischief, maund basket, mar- 
cantani merchant, mun sound of the wind, 
mnre wall, meacock henpecked, mop grin, 
militarist soldier, murrion affected with mur- 
rain, mammering hesitating, — mered only — 
mountant raised up. 

^The once used words in Shakespeare are 
often so beautiful and poetical that we won- 
der how they could fail to be his favorites 
again and again, for they are jewels that 
might hang twenty years before our eyes yet 
never lose their lustre. Why were they never 
shown but once ? 

They remind me of the exquisite crystal 



10 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

howl from which I saw a Jewess and her 
bridegroom drink in Prague, and which was 
then dashed in pieces on the floor of the sy- 
nagogue, or of the Chigi porcelain painted by 
Raphael, which, as soon as it had been once 
removed from the table, was thrown into the 
Tiber. To what purpose was this waste ? 
Why should they be used up with once using ? 
Even the Greek drama that would never pre- 
sume to let a god appear but for an action 
worthy of a god, was not so pervaded with 
horror of too much. 

Some specimens of this class which all 
writers but Shakespeare would have often 
paraded as pets, are such words as magical, 
mirthful, mightful, merriness, majestically, 
marbled, martyred, mountainous, magnani- 
mity, magnificence, marrowless, matin, mas- 
terpiece, masterdom, meander, mellifluous, 
menaces, mockable, monarchize, moon-beams, 
motto, mundane, mural, multipotent, mourn- 
ingly, etc. 

About one-tenth of the remaining once used 
words with initial M, are descriptive com- 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 11 

pounds. Nearly all of them are among the 
following twenty-six adjectives : maiden- 
tongued, maiden -widowed, man-entered, 
many-beaded, marble-breasted, marble-con- 
stant, marble-hearted, marrow-eating, mea n - 
apparel e d , merch an t- m airing, m e rcy-lackin g, 
mirth-moving, moving-delicate, mock- water, 
more-having, mortal-breathing, mortal-living, 
mortal-staring, motley-minded, mouse-eaten, 
moss-grown, mouth-filling, mouth-made, 
muddy-mettled, maid-pale, momentary-swift. 

From this list, which is nearly complete, it 
is evident that such compounds as may be 
mutiplied at will by a word coiner, form but 
a small proportion of the words that are used 
once only by Shakespeare. 

Again, a majority of Shakespearian once 
used words being familiar to us as household 
words, and needful to us as daily food, it 
seems impossible that he who had cared to use 
them once should have need of them no more. 

Some specimens, all with initial M, are the 
words, mechanics, machine, maxim, mission, 
monastic, mode, marsh, magnify, majority, 



12 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

malcontent, malignancy, manly (as an ad- 
verb), malleable, manna, maratime, man- 
slaughter, market-day, masterly, mealy, meek- 
ly, miserably, mercifully, mindful, memorial, 
mention, merchantlike, mercenary, memo- 
randums, mercurial, meridian, medal, me- 
tropolis, mimic, metaphysics, ministration, 
to moderate, misapply, misconstruction, mis- 
government, misquote, monster-like, mon- 
strously, monstrosity, moneyed, monopoly, 
mutable, mortised, mortise, muniments, 
mother-wit. 

The letter M, which has been the staple of 
the present paper, is probably a fair represen- 
tative of Shakespeare's diction in regard to 
words which he would term "seld-shown." 
The subject, however, deserves to be treated 
more exhaustively. Every letter ought to be 
investigated as a single one has now been, and 
more abundantly. Nor would the labor be 
arduous, if the task were assumed by any 
Shakespearian club and divided among a score 
of its fellows, as the work of lexicography was 
among the forty members of the French Aca- 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 13 

demy. Such an examination would conclu- 
sively confirm, or confute, the conclusions to 
which the facts now set forth have led. It 
would also suggest others, and those of still 
greater interest. 

In drawing up catalogues of once-used 
words, if such a set of co-laborers would ap- 
pend to each word the name of the play in 
which it occurs, the Shakesperian dramas 
could be easily compared in a manner which 
has never hitherto been possible. The once 
used words in each particular play would be 
readily drawn out in a table. Then it would 
at once become manifest how far the number 
of such words varied in different works, and 
whether it was greatest in the early, or middle, 
or latest period of Shakespearian productivity. 

In a casual reading of Cymbeline and Henry 
VIII., more than three score words in each 
that are elsewhere unfound have struck my 
eye; but more hundreds must have been 
passed unnoticed. Aside from the 549 once- 
used words in Henry V., already mentioned, 
I know not that such verbal statistics have 



14 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

been gathered. But they would not be without 
manifold utilities. They would aid in judging 
by style concerning the genuineness of doubt- 
ful passages. They would show how far 
Shakespeare's alms basket of such words, 
which he calls "fire-new," continued to the 
last, like charity, which never faileth. 

The array of once-used words which has 
been drawn up in the present writing, must — 
as I think — surprise any one who passes them 
in review. The further one pushes research 
in the same line, the more his wonder will 
grow. Of compounds with the pre-fix re — like 
reiterate and resignation — he will discover one 
hundred and fifty lacking two, no one of 
which he will meet with again. To the same 
class of vocables undiscoverable a second 
time belongs every word in the line, " Un- 
houseled, disappointed, unaneled," as I have 
already stated, and the italicized words in the 
following phrases : 

11 Horns whelked and. waved \i\iz the enridged 'sea" 

44 Massy staples 
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts sperr up," 



OtfCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 15 

In the following nine lines, which are al- 
most consecutive, the words in italics, num- 
bering nine (or ten, if we count lash, which is 
nowhere else employed in the sense of the 
thong or cord of a whip), make their entrances 
and exits once for all. 

" In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 

Her wagon-spokes made of long spinner's legs, 
The cover of the wings of grass hoppeis, 
The traces of the smallest spider's web. 
Her wagoner a small gray-coated gnat 
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash a film. 
Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers, 
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, 
Then dreams he of another benefice" 

And yet Borneo and Juliet y the play from 
which this passage is extracted, was among 
Shakespeare's earliest efforts. Though a pro- 
lific writer for twenty years afterward, he had 
no occasion for any one of these w r ords even 
once again, — and repeated the phrase " time 
out of mind " only on one occasion. 

Nowhere perhaps will the student of Shake- 
spearian diction be more astonished than in 
observing how uncommon is the repetition of 



16 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

the commonest words. Who would antici- 
pate that such vocables as the following 
would never do duty but once ? Fuller, shoe- 
maker, straggler, praying, crazy, sisterly, 
scholarly, profoundly, prodigiously, wordless, 
comeliness, restful, fitful, forefoot, forecast, 
springhalt, rinsing, flannel, frock, sprout, 
leech, salamander, flail, flake, cater, corpulent, 
beverage, navigation, salary, omen, obscurity, 
cataract, cathedral, symbol, gospel, inward- 
ness, Jesus, disciple, apostle, exhortation, 
homily, dirge, papist, institution, fragile, — or 
such word-clusters as, definite, definitive, de- 
finitively ; or these five sprouts from one root, 
to elf, elvish, elvish-marked, elf-lock, elf- 
skin. 

No one class of once-used words is more 
conspicuous in Shakespeare than alliterative 
compounds. This fact will be clear from the 
following very partial register of such forma- 
tions : all-abhorred, all-admiring, bow-back, 
burly-boned, bugbear, bull-bearing, bull- 
beeves, blood-bespotted, brow-bound, bate- 
breeding, blood-boltered, bow-boy, baby- 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 17 

brow, care-crazed, cloud-capped, counter- 
caster, cain-colored, canvas-climber, child- 
changed, custard-coffin, chamber-council, 
death-darting, dew-dropping, death-divining, 
deep-drawing, drug-dammed, dove-drawn, 
dismal-dreaming, double-dealing, double- 
damned, deep-drenched, dumb-discoursive, 
ever-esteemed, fast-falling, folly-fallen, foot- 
fall, faultful, fitful, fiery-footed, fleet-footed, 
fleet-foot, full-flowing, forceful, fraudful 
feast-finding, false-faced, foul-faced, free- 
footed, filly-foal, full-fed, find-fault, full- 
fraught, glass-gazing, gain-giving, grim- 
grinning, guts-griping, great-grown, hard- 
hearted, hard-handed, heaven-hued, heavenly- 
harnessed, heavy-hanging, heart-hardening, 
hell-hated, highly-heaped, hoary-headed, hol- 
low-hearted, hydra-headed, honey-heavy, 
honest-hearted, harvest-home, king-killer, 
love-lacking, low-laid, lack-luster, love-letter, 
lack-linen, lack-love, lank-lean, lass-lorn, 
long-legged, lily-livered, lazar-like, long-lived, 
lean-looked, light o' love, peace-parted, peri- 
wig-pated, proud-pied, pity-pleading, plume- 



18 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

plucked, pistol-proof, plot-proof, ripe-red, rid- 
ing-robe, riding-rod, surfeit-swelled, cinque- 
spotted, sweet-suggesting, saint-seducing, 
sober-sad, sad-set, sea-salt, sea-sorrow, sea- 
swallowed, silver-sweet, sober-suited, stili- 
stand, ship-side, spirit-stirring, super-subtle, 
super-serviceable, sweet-seasoned, summer- 
swelling, summer-steaming, sick-service, sly- 
slow, snail-slow, softly-sprighted, soft-slow, 
trumpet-tongued, tempest-tossed, tongue-tied, 
true-telling, travel-tainted, virgin-violator, 
want-wit, water-walled, wave-worn, war-worn, 
woolward, well-wilier, well-won, water-work, 
wonder-wounded. 

These words, and four or five thousand 
more equally excellent, which have been the 
golden language of the English-speaking 
world for three centuries since Shakespeare's 
time — and which, belonging to the immortal 
part of its vernacular, will be so forever — we 
are apt to think he should have worn in their 
newest gloss, not cast aside so soon. Why 
was he as shy of repeating them as Hudibras 
was of showing his wit, 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 19 

u Who bore it not about 

As if afraid to wear it out, 
Except on holidays or so, 

As men their best apparel do? 

This question, why a full fourth of Shake- 
speare's verbal riches was never brought to 
light more than once, is probably one which 
nobody can at present answer, even to his 
own satisfaction. Yet the phenomenon is so 
remarkable that every one will try after his 
own fashion to account for it. My own at- 
tempt at a provisional explanation I will pre- 
sent in the latter part of this paper. 

Meantime, we are left to conjectures. As 
of his own coinage I should set down such 
words as mirth-moving, merriness, motley- 
minded, masterdom, mockable, marbled- 
martyred, marrowless, mightful, multipotent, 
monarchize, etc., etc. 

Let us first notice another question concern- 
ing the once nsed words, namely that which 
respects their origin. Where did they come 
from ? How far did Shakespeare make them, 
and how far were they ready to his hand ? 



30 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

No approach to answering this iniquiry can 
be made for some years. Yet as to this mat- 
ter let us rejoice that the dictionary of the 
British Philological Society is now near publi- 
cation. This work, slowly elaborated by 
thousands of co-workers in many devious 
walks of study on both sides of the Atlantic, 
aims to exhibit the first appearance, in a book, 
of every English word. In regard to the 
great bulk of Shakespeare's diction, it will 
enable us ten years hence to see how much of 
it was known to literature before him, and 
how much of it he himself, a snapper up of 
unconsidered trifles, gathered or gleaned in 
highways and byways, or caused to ramify 
and effloresce from Saxon or classical roots 
and trunks, thus endowing his purposes 
with words to make them known. Pro- 
fessor Skeat, the most painstaking investi- 
gator known to me of early English, has 
discovered the word " disappointed " in no 
author earlier than Shakespeare. Nor has 
Shakespeare made use of that word more 
than once, namely in the line : 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 21 

11 Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled." 
In that line all the words without exception 
are once used words. 

The word " disappointed " is not employed 
by Shakespeare in its modern meaning, but as 
signifying unprepared; or better, perhaps, un- 
shriven. 

But however much of his linguistic treasury 
Shakespeare shall be proved to have inherited 
ready-made: whatever scraps he may have 
stolen at the feast of languages, it is clear 
that he was an imperial creator of language. 
Having a mint of phrases in his own brain, 
well might he speak with the contempt he 
does of those " fools who for a tricksy word 
defy the matter," — that is, slight or disregard 
it. He never needed to do that. Words 
were " correspondent to his command " and, 
"Ariel-like, did his sprighting gently.'' When 
has any verbal necessity compelled him to 
give his sense a turn that does not naturally 
belong to it ? 

It* is very possible that Shakespeare fre- 
quently shunned expressions he had once pre- 



22 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

ferred, because otherwise his style would 
become monotous, and so cloy the hungry 
edge of appetite. According to his own 
authority, "when they seldom come they 
wished to come." And again : 

11 Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, 
Since seldom coming in the long years set, 
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, 
Or captain jewels in the carcanet." 

In thousands of cases, however, Shake- 
speare cannot have rejected words through 
fear less he should repeat them. It has taken 
three centuries for the world to ferret out these 
once used words. Can we believe that he 
himself knew them all ? Unless he were the 
Providence which numbers all hairs of the 
head, he had not got the start of the majestic 
world so far as that, however myriad-minded 
we may consider him. 

An instinct which would have rendered 
him aware of each and every individual of 
five thousand words that he had employed 
once only would be as inconceivable as that 
of Falstaff which made him discern at mid- 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 23 

night the heir apparent in Prince Hal, when 
disguised as a highwayman. 

In the absence of other theories concerning 
the reasons for the Shakesperian once used 
words being so abundant, I throw out a sug- 
gestion of my own, which may stand till a 
better one shall supplant it. Shakespeare's 
forte lay in diversified characterization, and, 
in my judgment, when he had sketched each 
several character, he was never content till 
he had either found or fabricated the aptest 
words possible for painting its form and pres- 
sure even in all nuances most true to life. 
No two characters being — more than any 
two faces — identical in any particular ; 
hence no two descriptions as drawn by his 
genius could repeat many of the self-same 
words. Each of his vocables thus became, 
like each one of the seven thousand pieces in 
a locomotive, a detail fitting precisely the one 
niche it was ordained to fill, but out of place, 
dislocated, everywhere else. 

The more his ethical differentiations, the 
more his language was differentiated. His 



24 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

personages were as diversified as those por- 
trayed by the whole band of Italian paint- 
ers. But, being a wizard in words, he re- 
sembled the magician in mosaic who can de- 
lineate in stone every feature of those por- 
traits, thanks to his discriminating and imi- 
tating shades of color, as numberless as are 
even Shakespeare's words. 

It is hard to believe that Shakespeare's 
characters were born, like Athene from the 
brain of Jove, in panoplied perfection. They 
grew. The play of Troilus was a dozen years 
in growth. Internal evidence favors the opinion 
that Romeo and Juliet was an early work, and 
that it was subsequently revised and enlarged. 
Shakespeare, after having sketched out a play 
on the fashion of his youthful taste and skill, 
returned in after years to enlarge it, remodel 
it and enrich it with the matured fruits of 
years of observation and reflection. Love's 
Labor Lost first appeared in print with the an- 
nunciation that it was "newly corrected and 
augmented." It is now very generally re- 
garded as a revision of a play which Shake- 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 25 

speare had produced ten years before and 
named Love's Labor Won. Cymbeline was an 
entire rifacimento of an early dramatic at- 
tempt, showing not only matured fullness of 
thought but laboring intensity of compressed 
expression. This being the fact, it is clear 
that Shakespeare treated his dramas as Guido 
did the Cleopatra he would not let leave his 
studio till ten years after the non-artistic 
world had deemed that portrait finished. 
Just as, during those ten years, the painter 
was penciling his canvas with curious touches, 
each approximating some fraction nearer his 
ideal — so the poet sought to find out accept- 
able w r ords, or what he terms " an army of 
good words." He poured his new wine into 
new bottles, and never was at rest till he had 
arrayed his ideas in that fitness of phrase 
which comes only by inspirations. Had he 
survived fifty years longer I suppose he 
would to the last have been, like Plato, per- 
fecting his phrases. 

His manner in diction was progressive, 
and this progress has been deemed so clearly 



26 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

traceable in his plays that it can enable us 
to determine their chronological order, says 
Dryden, treating of Caliban: " His language 
is as hobgoblin as his person. In him Shakes- 
peare not only found out a new character, 
but devised and adapted a new manner of 
language for that character." And so, with 
his fools, in showing forth their minutest 
follies he works by wit and not by witchcraft. 
The result of Shakespeare's curious verbal 
felicity, is — that while other authors satiate 
and soon tire us — his speech forever breathes 
an indescribable freshness. 

1 ' Age cannot wither nor custom stale 
His infinite variety." 

In the last line I have quoted there is a 
once used word, but I think it is a word 
which you would hardly guess. It is the last 
word, — namely, " variety." 1 

1 Though this instance [Ant. and Cleop. ii, 2, 241] 
is the only occurrence of variety in the plays, we meet 
the word once more in Shakespeare's poems, namely, 
in the twenty-first line of Venus and Adonis. 

Making them red and pale with fresh variety. 
Not a few other words which appear once only in 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 27 

In order to make sure of the thing he re- 
fused to repeat the word. Indeed, he calls 
iteration " damnable/' 

On every average page of Shakespeare you 
are greeted and gladdened by at least five 
words that you never saw before in his writ- 
ings and that you will never see again: speak- 
ing once and then forever holding their 
peace, — each not only rare but a none-such — 
five gems just shown, then snatched away. 
Each page is studded with five stars, each as 
unique as the century flower, and like the 
night-blooming cereus 

41 The perfume and suppliance of a minute." 

The mind of Shakespeare was bodied forth 
as Montezuma was appareled; whose cos- 
tume, however gorgeous, was never twice the 
same, and so like Shakespeare's own " robe 
pontifical", ne'er seen but wondered at. 
Hence the Shakespearian style is fresh as 
morning dews and changeful as evening 

the plays are also repeated in the poems. But it was 
the once used words in the plays, and not in other 
Shakesperian writings, of which it was my aim to treat, 



28 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 

clouds, so that we remain forever doubtful in 
relation to his manner and his matter, which 
of them owes the greater debt to the other. 

The Shakespearian plots are analogous to 
the grouping of Raphael, the characters to the 
drawing of Michael Angelo, but the word 
painting exceeds the coloring of Titian. Ac- 
cordingly, in view of Shakespeare's diction, 
I would long ago have said, if I could, what I 
read in Arthur Helps concerning a perfect 
style, that " there is a sense of felicity about 
it, declaring it to be the product of a happy 
moment, so that you feel that it will not 
happen again to that man who writes the 
sentence, nor to any other of the sons of men, 
to say the like thing so choicely, tersely, mel- 
lifluously and completely/' In the central 
court of the Neapolitan museum I observed 
grape-clusters, volutes, moldings, fingers and 
antique fragments of all sorts wrought in the 
rarest marble, lying scattered on the pave 
ment, exposed to sun and rain, cast down the 
wrong side up, and seemingly thrown away, 
as when the stones of the Jewish sanctuary 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 29 

were poured out in every street. Nothing re- 
veals the sculptural opulence of Italy like that 
apparent wastefulness. It seems to proclaim 
that Italy can afford to make nothing of what 
would elsewhere be judged worthy of shrines. 
We say to ourselves, " If such be the things 
she throws away, what must be her jewels ! " 
A similar feeling rises in me while exploring 
Shakespeare's prodigality in once used words. 
His exchequer must have been more exhaust- 
less than the Bank of England; and he threw 
away more dies for coining words than the 
British mint ever possessed for coining 
money. 

The writer of the foregoing paper is very 
desirous to ascertain whether anything with 
the same special aim as this paper has been 
published, and if so, what and when. He 
earnestly hopes that what he has done for 
the single letter M. will be done by other 
Shakesperians one by one; or, far better, 
in combination — for all the letters of the 
alphabet. When this labor has been fin- 
ished, a vantage ground for new Shakes- 



30 ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE, 

pearian surveys will have been secured, 
and conclusions may thus become evident 
which cannot now be conjectured. If any 
club shall undertake this verbal investigation, 
let it be determined in the outset whether the 
different forms of a word, — its changes in 
spelling, number, part of speech, and conju- 
gation shall each be deemed a separate word, 
— or shall be counted as one. The author re- 
grets that he had no settled opinion on this 
point when he began the present article. 
Hence the statistics of vocabularies he has 
given differ considerably from those in G. P. 
Marsh and other writers. 

White is whitest on black. Accordingly, 
the riches of Shakespeare as to its use " once 
for-all " of a world of words, would be tenfold 
more conspicuous could we contrast him in this 
regard with other writers, and especially with 
his contemporaries. But, for this end to be 
fully reached, statistical materials are wanting: 
for no concordances, it is believed, exist of 
Shakespeare's fellow-dramatists. Is there no 
admirer of Marlowe, or Ben Jonson, who will 



ONCE USED WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE. 31 

do for his favorite such a labor of love as 
Mary Cowden Clarke during sixteen years did 
for her's ? After all, every reader of the Eliza- 
bethan playwriters must have been struck 
with their lack of once-used words which so 
abound in Shakespeare. On the other hand, 
their fancy for "favorite sons," pet words 
lugged in by the ears when tKey ought to 
have been cast out into outer darkness, has 
forced itself on the attention of every student. 
Let us see right early, from some one familiar 
with the old dramatists, the difference, — the 
contrast — heaven-wide in this particular — 
between the lesser lights and the one great 
light. So shall it be best demonstrated that 
he surpassed them all as the day the night. 



>k In brief, sir, study what you most affect." 

Ta m ing of 7 h e Shren>\ I . i . 

THE SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY 

OF NEW YORK 

(Incorporated April 20TH, 1885.) 

,k To promote the knowledge and study 0/ the ivories of Wil- 
liam Shakespeare and the Shakespearian 
and Elizabethan Drama." 

INITIATION, $10.00. ANNTAL DUES, $5.00. 
LIFE MEMBERSHIP, $25.00. 

The Society assembles on the last Thursday in each 
month (except July, August, September, and October) 
at Hamilton Hall, Columbia College, New York City, 

The Society is Liberal and Catholic, and welcomes 
members of all shades of opinion, who, without com- 
mitting themselves to any school, can heartily join its 
members in promoting the knowledge and study of the 
works of William Shakespeare and the Shakespearean 
and the Elizabethan Drama. 

The Society proposes the reading of an original 
paper, monthly, with discussion thereof ; and to print 
such papers in pamphlet, to be furnished gratis to 
members not in arrears, 

The Library of Texts, and Works of Shakespearean 
History, Speculation, Criticism, etc., will be deposited 
in the University Library of Columbia College, and will 
be always open to members, or others upon the card of 
members, from 8 A. M. to 10 P. M. (Sundays except- 
ed), subject, however, 10 the rules of the University 
Library. 

Contributions consisting of additions to the Library 
of Books, Pamphlets, Extracts, Pictures, Statuary, etc., 
or funds for Library purposes, gratefully received. 

The Society will keep a bulletin list of the latest 
works in press or preparation, from which its library is 
to be augmented. Subjects for papers furnished on 
application to the President. 

Address all Letters of Inquiry and Remittances. 
JAMES E. REYNOLDS, Treas., 

68 Broadway. 




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